Piano + Listen With(out) Piano

Piano + Listen With(out) Piano

40.00

Double LP from Alexis Taylor. Exclusive US edition of both records. Designed by Joe Gilmore with art by Oliver Payne.

Piano

Hot Chip front man Alexis Taylor pares everything back to just piano and voice for an intimate record of new songs, reinterpretations of his own writing, and a selection of favourites both well-known and unheard before by other artists. Recorded at Hackney Road Studios by Shuta Shinoda, Piano invites the listener to be privy to a very private recital, with Alexis’ vocal and piano captured live and up-close, preserving each beautiful moment.

"I had always wanted to make a loose and to some extent unplanned piano record - partly inspired by an un-made but suggested Alex Chilton solo piano LP that a friend of mine told me about 15 years ago or so. I began one a few years back which then morphed into the second About Group LP - but the idea stayed in the back of my mind all the while.

“The idea with this record was to choose songs of my own and others' that were personal to me and to document live performances which were intimate and unadorned. I wanted to reduce everything to the barest elements, record a great piano well and do as little as possible to the recordings eq or effects-wise. The mood created on the record is pretty different from that on other records I have been involved with. It feels like a special place to be able to go to."

Listen With(out) Piano

Alexis Taylor announces Listen With(out) Piano, a companion album to his 2016 record Piano. Listen With(out) Piano features new versions by artists including Papa M (David Pajo), Green Gartside (Scritti Politti), Spring Heel Jack, Beatrice Dillon, Brian DeGraw (Gang Gang Dance), which can be played on their own, or at the same time as the songs on Piano, to create a brand new listening experience.

The album features the work of eleven of Alexis’s favourite musicians, handpicked to create new tracks designed to work in response to the songs on Piano, the third solo album by the Hot Chip frontman. Though the record can be synched with the original Piano recordings by playing both albums on two devices simultaneously, the tracks on Listen With(out) Piano can be also be enjoyed as original songs on their own merits.

“My brief was both very wide open and very specific, and part of the pleasure for me, and now hopefully for the listeners, is to see how everyone responded so differently to the task,” Alexis explains. “The results are truly amazing, and here you have a new album that works both as a kind of electro-acoustic ambient companion piece to Piano, and as a series of musical clothes to be put onto the deliberately bare record I released.”